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In 1939 the Kreigsmarine faced a considerable task in seeking to destroy British merchant shipping. According to Admiral Doenitz himself, Germany needed to sink 750,000 tons of merchant shipping per month if she were to economically cripple Britain. With only 57 submarines at his disposal, and while the total shipping losses to the British in the war's first four months nevertheless proved promising, given the lack of resources, Doenitz was nowhere near starving out a nation with at least 12 million tons of shipping available for global trade. Because of the low operational U-boat totals, Doenitz could only maintain 13 U-boats at sea at any one time during the war's first year.[17] In the New Year the focus of German and allied naval operations shifted north into Scandinavia. German planners and Churchill alike both looked to a campaign in Scandinavia, but Hitler acted first. On March 1, 1940, Hitler issued a Directive describing the German invasion of Denmark and Norway as necessary to protect German iron ore imports from Sweden, as well as provide secure access to the open ocean for submarine warfare.[18] In spite of the Royal Navy's imposing strength, Germany took Denmark and Norway in a whirlwind campaign. The Germans also inflicted substantial losses on the Royal Navy; sinking the aircraft carrier Glorious, two cruisers, seven destroyers, and four submarines and inflicting heavy damage on several British cruisers and destroyers. German torpedo malfunctions however mitigated Allied naval losses. Consequently, of the forty-two German U-boat attacks launched during operations in Norway, thirty failed, with nearly all failures stemming from torpedo failures.[19] Nonetheless, two of the world's largest navies, Britain and France, failed to stop the Kreigsmarine from landing troops up and down the long Norwegian coast. German littoral operations, heavily buttressed by the extensive use of U-boats had proven a tremendous success. On the other hand, the Scandinavian campaign also dealt a devastating blow to the Kreigsmarine's surface fleet. A blow so stunning as to guarantee that no matter what happened on the European Continent Germany would not be able to invade the British Isles any time soon thereafter. Although enduring heavy losses the Royal Navy could afford it, Germany could not. During the Norwegian Campaign, the Allies sent a large portion of the German destroyer fleet to the bottom. The British and Norwegians also sank or damaged several German pocket battleships and cruisers, including the Blucher which Norwegian shore based gun batteries sank on April 9. Joining the Blucher's misfortune were the Hipper - damaged in action of April 8th; Karlsruhe - torpedoed by a British submarine on April 9; Gneisenau - damaged in a surface engagement with the H.M.S. Renown on April 9; Lutzow - torpedoed by a British submarine on April 11; and Scharnhorst - damaged in action in June.[20] The British, and their allies, had decimated the German surface fleet and the war had scarcely begun. Therefore, with German dreams of a blue water fleet shattered, Hitler had no choice but to turn to asymmetric warfare and the submarine for carrying the load at sea, just as Imperial Germany had during the First World War. The submarine was and remains today an ideal asymmetric weapon. Historian Richard Overy wrote cogently about problems presented by submarines in his 1995 study of Allied victory in the war, "In an area as vast as the Atlantic the submarine was an inherently difficult enemy to defeat. Cruising on the surface it could outrun most ships; submerged it was invisible without the right scientific equipment. The initiative lay with the submarines who could choose where and when to engage enemy traffic."[21] As increasing numbers of German U-boats took to the sea British merchant losses began climbing. Although Admiral Doenitz, consistently fell short of sinking 750,000 tons of British shipping per month, the German U-boats performed capably in the War's early years.[22] Amazingly, German success' multiplied even though from August 1940 to July 1941 only an average of 16 U-boats were cruising at sea at any one time. Wear and tear, no less combat damage, meant U-boats regularly needed to cycle off station during these years and return to Germany for repairs. Nevertheless, during the last three quarters of 1940 alone, the Germans sank well over one million tons of shipping each quarter with this lost tonnage representing approximately 300 Allied ships sank every three months. Of the one million plus tons of shipping sunk each quarter, nearly 75% was attributable to German U-boats.[23] German victory over France and Norway, although costly for the Kriegsmarine, had provided several advantages for the German U-boat fleet. Thousands of miles of newly available Northwestern European coastline provided German U-boats with direct access to the North Atlantic. With more flexibility and closer proximity to the North Atlantic sea-lanes the U-boats increased their patrol time; this worked as a force multiplier and improved German opportunities for finding and sinking enemy shipping. New bases on the French Atlantic coast had cut the distance U-boats needed to travel for reaching their hunting grounds by over 600 miles.[24] With British anti-submarine escorts too few in number to protect merchant shipping, U-boat captains enjoyed rich hunting.[25] This convergence of factors is why U-boat captains referred to these early years, during 1940-41, as the "happy times". The North Atlantic's middle passages offered particularly lucrative and relatively safe sailing for the U-boats; far beyond the range of shore-based ASW aircraft. As the U-boat threat to Britain grew, the German surface fleet most spectacularly demonstrated its ineffectiveness in May 1941; when the modern and powerful 50,000-ton German battleship Bismarck set forth on a convoy raiding patrol accompanied by the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen. The British quickly found and intercepted the German task force. The ensuing battle was quick and deadly, as the Bismarck's guns rapidly found the range and sent the older British warship, The HMS Hood, to the bottom; leading to the single largest loss of life during the War for the proud British surface fleet. The Hood's companion battleship HMS Prince of Wales promptly fled the scene. The Bismarck however suffered damage in the exchange of cannon fire and cut short its patrol. Attacked repeatedly over the ensuing days, the Bismarck endured severe damage from British carrier-borne aircraft and finally sank after a running but doomed battle with the Royal Navy.[26] |
The Globe At War |
Revisiting the Second World War's Battle for the Atlantic: A Case Study in Asymmetric Naval Warfare Providing Powerful Lessons for today's Navy |
The Battle for the Atlantic: 1939-1941 Despite the heavy burden eventually borne by German U-boats in the naval war against Britain Germany's surface warships initially attracted the Royal Navy's attentions. German surface raiders such as the pocket battleships Graf Spee and Deutschland operated in the Atlantic, terrifying British naval planners, but in reality producing decidedly underwhelming and mixed results. Early in the War the Graf Spee found some success in sinking just over 50,000 tons of Allied shipping - nine ships. Nevertheless, the Graf Spee quickly met her match within months of the War's beginning and in a running battle with cruisers from the Royal Navy suffered enough damage as to cause her captain to seek shelter. When the Graf Spee put into port at Montevideo, the British trapped the German raider and thus the Germans scuttled her in the South Atlantic off the coast of Paraguay. Ships such as the Graf Spee repeatedly proved ineffective during the War for the simple reason that unless they sank Allied merchant ships in considerable numbers their loss represented an incredibly poor return on the investment. Yet, less than four months into the war, a far cheaper alternative for Germany to rely on in challenging the Royal Navy had already made its presence felt in a particularly spectacular fashion. In the last four months of 1939, U-boats added 421,156 tons of shipping to the total sunk by the Graff Spee.[15] Nevertheless, completely overshadowing the U-boats early war predations on Allied merchant shipping was the success achieved when U-47 sank the elderly battleship H.M.S. Royal Oak at the Scapa Flow naval anchorage just after the War began. U-47's incredible feat of arms, in penetrating the British navy's defenses at the supposedly impregnable Scapa Flow, demonstrated the potential effectiveness of the cheaply constructed U-boat and its small crew. Twenty times smaller than the Royal Oak, the accomplishment achieved by U-47 represented the pinnacle of asymmetric warfare.[16] |
Self Titled - Picture Courtesy Department of the Navy, United States |
The increasing presence of Allied naval bombers ultimately resulted in Hitler's decision to withdraw German heavy surface ships from the Atlantic.[27] German capital ships made only one real contribution to the German war effort (other than in a measure of gross tonnage sunk - always negligible since during the entire war German capital ships only sank 47 Allied ships).[28] Simply by virtue of their presence, devastating firepower, and pursuit capabilities, these German surface raiders tied down significant numbers of British warships and other military assets. The German surface fleet however could not directly challenge the Royal Navy. Hence, the German naval effort fell ever more onto the U-boats.[29] Although September 1941 represented another decent month for the German U-boat fleet, with 202,000 tons of Allied shipping sunk against negligible U-boat losses, by November the Battle of the Atlantic fell into a deep lull; when Hitler scattered his U-boats, undermining German efforts in the Atlantic.[30] During the winter of 1941-42, Hitler insisted on transferring U-boats to Norwegian waters because he feared a British landing attempt in Norway. As a result, by April 1942, 19 U-boats fruitlessly cruised off the Norwegian coast.[31] In 1941, however, the German U-boat fleet faced an even greater distraction than Norway. Germany diverted U-boats to the Mediterranean in 1941 to support Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps. The U-boats accomplished almost nothing toward interdicting Allied shipping in the Mediterranean.[32] As many as two dozen U-boats patrolled the Mediterranean and yet only 2,000 tons of enemy shipping - two ships - went to the bottom in October 1941. Tangentially, Rommel's supply situation improved; but for other reasons, including increased air cover for Axis convoy's, and British reductions in military assets in the region in favor of the Far East in December 1941.[33] The impact produced by diverting the U-boats from the North Atlantic was significant. German historian Sonke Neitzel estimated if the U-boats diverted to the Mediterranean and Arctic had instead remained in the Atlantic; the Allies would have lost an additional 1.9 million tons of shipping by the high point of the war in the Atlantic; during the spring of 1943. German historian and professor, Jurgen Rohwer also points out Ultra intercepts (the code name Britain gave to her code-breaking network) saved approximately the same amount of Allied shipping during this period.[34] To be fair, these same historians also identify the danger from extrapolating in such a linear fashion because of the variances in battle and unpredictable reactions to losses and victories by competing combatants. Furthermore, Ultra intercepts and German U-boat deployments are highly different variables. Nonetheless, it is probable the Allies avoided another 1 million tons of lost shipping from the impact produced by the poor German deployment when compared against Allied intelligence successes.[35] An even bigger problem than British code breaking confronted the German navy in 1941 however; the burgeoning US involvement in the Atlantic war. 1 |2 |3 |4 |5 |6 |7 |8 Next Page |
Self Titled - Picture Courtesy Department of the Navy, United States |